The Jack Noodle Journal

I realized the other day that I haven’t been listening to much music lately. I have been listening to audio books and NPR while at the office. I’m going to try to finish off the year though listening to more music.

I went out CD shopping with my good buddy G yesterday during lunch. I hadn’t been in a record store for a while. There were quite a few items that I could have picked up. Looks like there are currently some good picks out there for ones listening pleasure.

At the record store G and I were talking about how Carson Ellis’s illustration work is so freaking awesome. I love it. She does the illustration on the Decemberists CDs.
G asks me if she was young.
Without skipping a beat or even thinking I say, “No, she’s our age”.
Wow, what a startling discovery! I no longer group myself with the youngsters! No, think about it a minute. When did that moment occur? My answer was automatic!
In the past if that question was asked I would have said, “Yeah she’s our age”.
Disturbing.

I purchased two CDs. I got “Young Machetes” by The Blood Brothers and I got the new one by The Decemberists called “The Crane Wife”. I got some good picks this time around. Both CDs are great.

“The Crane Wife” CD is gorgeous. I like this Decemberists CD quite a bit more than the other CD we have “Her Majesty”. They are adding more rock and pop this time out. This one seems more like a Belle and Sebastian CD. I did a bit of googling and found some articles on the Decemberists. I didn’t know that people felt so strongly about them. Looks like fans and non-fans like to bully them about a bit. Probably like Belle and Sebastian and Death Cab For Cutie gets picked on. Come on people, leave the hipsters alone and pick on someone your own size!

The Blood Brothers on the other hand, probably don’t get picked on by bullies now days. I bet they were when they were nerdy high school kids though. I love “The Young Machetes” CD! It is also a gorgeous album. Here’s the thing though, It’s not as easy to jump into as “The Crane Wife”. The Blood Brothers are definitely a hard rock / punk act. Would it be categorized as experimental noise rock? My fingers were digging into the arm of my chair during the first listen. I have heard louder and harder rock before in my life, so it wasn’t that. I think it was the scream singing. There’s quite a bit of yelling and screaming on Young Machetes. I’m not dissing the screaming. I think it actually fits as an instrument on the album. Once you become desensitized to the scream singing you can discover the tasty nuggets on the album. It rocks. Ones efforts in listening are aptly rewarded when you get to the amazing song “Street Wars / Exotic Fox Holes”. It’s beautiful.

Here’s where I go off the deep end.
Am I starting to act like Russell Crowe in “A Beautiful Mind”? Seeing bizarre connections and reading secret codes into newspaper articles?

My hypothesis here is that the CDs “The Young Machetes” and “The Crane Wife” are actually two sides to the same coin. They are the same album! I have been listening to them together one after the other and they fit perfectly together. They are just mirror images of each other. The Young Machetes is The Crane Wife’s evil twin. Or even more sinister would be that Crane Wife is the evil twin. Both of the albums have similar themes. Songs about love, war, loss and murder. Both bands are experimenting with heading more towards pop music be it from different directions. I also believe that both albums have the same line “burn this whole city down”. If I knew more about music I bet I could find similarities in the musical structure.

Is this all just coincidence? Am I make this up? Or could the fact that both recordings where made in June 2006 in the Pacific Northwest (One in Portland, one in Seattle), have something to do with it? Are these two bands friends that hangout?

Do your own listening and you’ll see what I’m getting at.

As an experiment, I am going to put the two CDs together in a folder in iTunes and shuffle them together. If I’m right, the outcome will be a seamless listening experience.

Yeah I’m feeling a bit loopy now.

The TV told me that it was 30 degrees when I left for the bus this morning.
Pretty chilly.
I was bundled up good. I left a few minutes later and that seems to have been just right. I walked straight out of my door, on to the bus, off the bus, stood for 2 minutes at the MAX station, got on the MAX, got off at my stop and walked straight into the office. Timed it pretty well. Not too much exposure to the elements. Don’t worry about me again until the commute this evening.

I guess the winds are supposed to pick up later this morning. Wind chill factor! Wind chill factor! Those news guys and weather reporters sure want a blizzard don’t they? They are hyping this cold snap up something fierce.

I should go back through the journal and find the last time I bitched about it being too hot. Reading that entry should warm me up.

I haven’t been in the writing mood over the last few days. A bit of the doldrums I imagine. Over the history of the Noodle Journal I believe that November and December have always been light writing months.

“Come on ole boy, snap out of it!”

I am currently entertaining an interest in mazes. I am think about drawing up a few hundred of them for you to download and print out on your office printers. I am also doing some research on religious relics and may stuff some of that into the story of the mazes. Do you think people would be confused if I called my mazes “maps”? If I had a maps section here on the site, people probably wouldn’t click there to play mazes would they?

Stay tuned, more mazes, riddles, and word jumbles to follow…

Good morning!

That’s it for Thanksgiving. Did you have a good one? Ours was fine. K made a splended meal for her side of the family on Thursday. We went to my mom’s on Friday for Thanksgiving dinner number two. We pretty much stuffed ourselves all weekend long.

I didn’t see any snow on the way in this morning. I’m listening to my coworkers talk right now and they said it was snowing on the way in from where ever they were coming from. There’s supposed to be a snow storm today? I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like it. I’ll have to check the weather report. I’m indifferent. Snow or no snow, either way is fine. K on the other hand, is praying for snow. She lives for those rare school closure snow days. I don’t know folks, I don’t feel a snow day coming. We’ll see.

Yeah, back at work. Gosh, I’m not into it right now. Maybe I should give it an hour or so to see if it takes. I was so groggy on the bus and MAX this morning.

We’ve got rain people! Today looks like it will be a great day to have a job indoors. It is very damp out there right now.

Congratulations to the dashing and debonaire Mr. Seth! The news on the nets is that his masters thesis has been accepted and he will now have a masters in geography. Hooray for that! Geography right? Not geology. We are VERY proud of you here on the West coast. Nice work. Do something special for yourself this week won’t you?

Ah masters. I want a masters. I don’t want to pay for it though. Why isn’t education free?

One of my attic finds that I forgot to mention yesterday was my old Nintendo Gameboy. I had K pick me up some batteries and now the puppy is fired up. This is the original Gameboy not that fancy Gameboy Advanced number. It’s huge. I think it is 3 times the size of an iPod. I only have one game left for it. Super Mario Land 2. I went to Fred Meyer to buy more games yesterday and couldn’t find any. I think my gameboy might be too old to find new games for. I could have sworn there was a clearance bin at Freddy’s with old Gameboy games. I guess they finally got rid of them. I have a couple of places in mind left to check. I think Ebay will be my best bet. I want to at least get Tetris again.

Maybe finding old, cheap Gameboy games at yard sales will be my hobby now? That will probably be fun for a few weeks.

Hey there!

The pictures of the remodeled Noodle bathroom are up for your viewing. K did a great job styling the new bathroom for the photo shoot. The red slippers are a nice touch.

I finished listening to “The World is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman. It was a great book. The discussion of globalization and the fact that there is no turning back was a tad startling at first. By the end of the book I felt pretty good about still being able to be employable in a flat World. You have to work hard to keep up in today’s global workplace. The days of sitting back and working comfortably at your factory job until retirement are over!

After finishing my World is Flat audio book I got antsy. Now what was I going listen to? I looked through the audio book section on iTunes I found the book “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson in the sci-fi section. I am a fan of Stephenson’s work and have been interested in checking out his earlier books. I purchased it and have been listening for the last couple of days at the office. Snow Crash is a great sequel to the World is Flat. The America in Snow Crash is the futuristic vision of the consequences of the flattening World in Friedman’s book.

It was nice listening to a fiction story again. I realized that I have been reading a lot of nonfiction books over the last few months. I formed a list of all the nonfiction I have been reading. I have actually been reading quite a few books lately. That’s awesome. Hooray for reading!

I’m going to stick to reading fiction for a while now. I need some good stories to get my creative blood flowing again.

Here’s the list of nonfiction books I have read recently:

“Writing the Killer Treatment” by Michael Halperin.
“Substance of Style” by Virginia Postrel
“Visions of Utopia” by Edward Rothstein, Herbert Muschamp, and Martin Marty.

I am also still working on the book “Techgnosis” by Erik Davis. Man, that book is awesome. I read quite a few more pages of it waiting in the car with the puppies while K and Mr. Baptist were doing their shopping over the weekend. Although I am making a pact to only read fiction for the time being, I think Techgnosis will be the exception.

I was reading those books doing research for my television show that I will some day write.

The book that I was actually looking for when I bought Snow Crash to listen to was “The Gunslinger” Book One of the Dark Tower Series by Stephen King. They didn’t have the first one available on iTunes. They had all of the other books in the series, but not the first one. Everybody says that I will really like the Dark Tower books so I’m going to see if everybody is right. My stepfather Greg gave me a copy of the Gunslinger a few years ago but I didn’t get to it. Now that I am ready for it, I can’t find it of course.

I know it is around here somewhere.

UPDATE:

After spending most of my Sunday going through boxes of books and papers, I have decided to declare the Gunslinger as missing and go buy a new copy of the book.

I spent a good portion of the day in the attic going through junk up there. We put things in the attic that we don’t want to throw away but don’t need to see or use in our everyday lives. Lots of books and boxes of old photos. My first computer is sitting up there. The attic items hold more value to us than the items that we put in the basement. Attic items stay safe and dry. We should probably just throw everything we put in the basement away. Gooey mildewy mess down there.

Our attic is hard to get up into. The hole in the ceiling is pretty small. When putting boxes up there you have to empty the boxes, climb the ladder, fold up the boxes, and stuff them through the tiny hole. Once the box is up in the attic you can then go back down the ladder and begin lugging the contents of the box up to be put back in the box. K had emptied out one of our bookshelves to be used now to hold kitchen items instead of books. I had to put a bunch of books in the attic. That was also a good excuse to go through the stuff up there and look for the Gunslinger book.

I didn’t find the Gunslinger book but I found lots of other treasures that I hadn’t rummaged through for a year or so. Some of the attic treasures are packing on the years. I have my drawings from 3rd grade up there! I have to figure out a way to digitize all that old stuff.

I have stacks of old magazines up there that are strange visions of the recent past. I have a bunch of old computer magazines with articles about computer systems that were top of the line in 1996 and are amazingly tiny by todays standards. iPods have more memory now. I also found a stack of my old Mondo 2000 magazines. Mondo was an awesome magazine. It’s fascinating to me to compare their cybervisions of the World and the internet with 2006 outcomes. That cyberpunk stuff was pretty big before the turn of the century wasn’t it? I wonder if that cyberpunk style will ever catch on again?

I took a big stack of stuff down out of the attic to read and look at, but I put more up there than I took down.

My Pa-in-law, K’s dad, Mr. Baptist got into town last night. It’s good to see the guy. He got in around 10:45 so we didn’t do too much chatting before turning in. The holiday season is sneaking up on us. Friends and family are coming to our fine town to fill their bellies with turkey.

Maybe now he can help us with the few remaining bathroom remodel tasks. I got the water to stop spraying out of the faucet last night. That’s a good start. K took a bath. Another good sign. There were some drops coming out of the drain pipe. Maybe I could duct tape them. I noticed some water on the tile around the sink this morning.
I’m going to try to set the shower up tonight.

I’m getting tired of this bathroom business. I’ll be happy when it’s done.

Okay, I am going to hunker down now and have myself a serious work day.

I have almost finished my audio book, “The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Updated and Expanded (Unabridged)” by Thomas L. Friedman. Good stuff. I will have to reflect on the topics discussed and write up a proper book report when I finish it.

Hoorah, Rah! Rah! Monday.
Oh yes, how we love thee.

Oh yeah, I have some library books to return. Don’t forget.

Well, we made it through another weekend.

K and I spent the whole weekend home improving. The bathroom remodel is nearing completion.
I’m feeling stiff and sore this morning.

The tile is all installed and looks awesome. They finished putting it in on Friday. The tile guys still have a few spots left to grout.

Thanks to the Marcys and the Castichells for their help Saturday night. Saturday night was the carry the tub back in, put in the new toilet, and stand the wobbly sink up party.

Sunday was spent mostly trying to get the bathtub hooked back up. I went through the whole spectrum of home improvement emotions. From thinking that remodeling was fun with thoughts of becoming a plumber, all the way down to thinking that this was the most miserable time I had ever had in my life and trying to think up new cuss words to properly describe my frustration. It was exciting when things worked and depressing when they didn’t. I have calmed down now and am back somewhere in the middle of the emotion rainbow.

I think we are almost there with the bathtub. We got all of the the pipes hooked back up properly and they are no longer leaking. Now we just have to get the water that is spaying out of the new faucet fixture knob to stop. After that is figured out we will set the shower pipe and shower curtain ring back up.

K did a marvelous job painting the bathroom yesterday. It’s going to look really good in there when we finish. We remembered to take before photos, so I’ll post up the before and after shots when we are done.

Good morning. I’m at home today. Baby-sitting the animals while the tile in our bathroom continues to be put in.

It is nice taking an unscheduled day off from the office. It has been a while since I have just laid around on a work day. Remember the many months of me staying home back during my unemployed days? Ah yes, those were the days. Watching and memorizing Perry Mason at noon. Walking to the bank to cash my unemployment check. Victory Walk is what I called it back then. No wait, it was called Freedom March. I should go back and read some of those old posts.

Glad to be working. Not working sucks.

I slept in with stinky Phillip. Speaking of stinky, this is now day number 2 without a shower. This is a strange state for me. I’m use to showering every day. Believe it or not I am usually quite clean. You could eat breakfast off of my bare chest I am so clean.

I just got back from walking to Zupan’s. I used their bathroom for some “not ordained for yard” activities. I am finding that not having a functioning bathroom makes you think you have to go potty more often. I want to make some coffee, but do I dare?

I am going to watch “2001: A Space Odyssey” today. I’m excited. I hope it gives me a shot of inspiration.

Writing is what I really should be doing today. I have kind of been on hold with my television series that I was writing. I should slug through it and keep going. I am stopped at the rethinking of the plot stage. I am trying to take it in a different direction. I need to expand my ideas that are original and unique while jettisoning the ones that are now seeming over played.

Okay, I’ll admit it. Watching 48 episodes of Lost in a row is what has taken the wind out of my television writing sails. I knew I shouldn’t have watched it. Wasn’t I even saying early on that it might muddy the waters?

I’ll keep it going. I can’t stop. I must continue. I will keep writing.
Maybe not today though.

Election day is over.
Quite a few of the voting results are in.
Did you all vote?

Are the bloggers blogging? Probably huh?

I was hoping after election night the news folks would stop talking about this election business. Yeah, I knew in my heart that wasn’t going to happen. It’s all theater. Quite a few of the races are still too close to call so we’ll probably be hearing more about this sitcom.

From the few minutes of NPR I have listened to already this morning it sounds like the democrats did pretty well. A majority of the public is fed up with Mr. Bush finally? Majority? Okay well, a majority of the 40% of citizens who decided to vote. 60% of Americans didn’t vote? What the hell is that about? Shameful. Hey people, it’s not very hard to vote. It’s pretty simple. Were 60% of you too busy to vote? Did you feel like you didn’t know enough about the issues? I barely knew anything about any of the issues and I still voted.

Why did things have to go so far into the toilet before people started getting fed up? Where were these voters that are now sending a message to the administration? Why couldn’t you have been fed up back then and sent a message that said that you didn’t want to elect this guy?

I don’t know if things will be better with the democrats having more power. Maybe it will be a good start?

Speaking of toilets, I peed in the yard this morning.
K and I gutted the bathroom last night. Bathroom remodel 2006 is on baby!
Taking the toilet, the sink and the bathtub out of the bathroom wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be. Putting that stuff back in could be more difficult.
The tile guys should be at the house right now getting started.

K is mad. I watched the first episode of Lost season 3. I couldn’t help myself yesterday during lunch. Season 3 is just waiting there on the internet to be watched. She is mad I watched it without her. I have an addiction. I need to go to Lost rehab. I promised her I wouldn’t watch anymore episodes until we can see them together as a family.

We finished season 2 of Lost last night. Pretty exciting stuff. Now what? There have been 5 or so new episodes out already this season. We’d have to see those to be caught up. It is possible to watch them all online currently but I think we might wait for them to release season 3 on DVD. Watching them all in a row with a crisp DVD picture and commercial free is a good way to watch that series. Season 2 ended in a good spot. I’m curious to see what’s going to unfold but I’m not so invested with where the show was heading to have that NEED to know urgency.

I went and saw Saw 3 with Mr. Martin yesterday. It was fair. Having blood pour out of the screen and splatter all over you is a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon with your buddy. That franchise seems to be getting worse with each installment. It started well enough, I thought, “oh man this is going to be a duesy”. The movie quickly crumbled into a pile of crap. It was horribly violent. I got the feeling by the end that the only thing the movie makers wanted was one giant gore-fest. They seem annoyed that they had to include a story. Of course I knew what I was in for before I went. I’ve seen the other two movies. The first two Saw movies did actually have some interesting plot twists. Saw 3 fell apart at the end. Towards the end they had a giant montage going through and explaining everything that had happened. It was as if they thought you had been sleeping for 45 minutes and missed the beginning. Yeah, take out what little mystery there was and explain every little detail about your thread-bare plot.

I shouldn’t be watching splatter-fests like that. I think those kinds of movies warp your brain and cause scar tissue to build up.

It’s going to be an interesting week. Shaking things up a bit here at Noodle central. We are having some people come in and tile our bathroom this week. K and I are doing some schedule shuffling so that one of us can be there during the days they are working. Yeah, the bathroom remodel. I probably will be excited once it is finished. Right now I can’t get over the anticipation of pain in the assness. K would be the first to tell you that I’m not fond of changing things up or doing stuff when it comes to home improvement.

We’ll see.

We spent a good portion of Saturday driving around in the rain going to different stores looking for toilets.
We found one. Woo hoo! Now we have a new place to put our crap.

I think we may be nearing the “never go to Home Depot ever again” point. That place stinks. I think that the one that we go to is understaffed or something. We waited around for an eternity for someone to assist us. Finally we just left and went somewhere else.

Bathroom remodel 2006!